Mayor tours Marlborough solar facility

Thursday

May 15, 2014 at 10:10 AMMay 15, 2014 at 10:10 AM

By Kendall HatchDaily News Staff

MARLBOROUGH – Mayor Arthur Vigeant on Wednesday took a tour of a new solar company that recently came to the city.Vigeant, along with a handful of other city and business officials, walked through Vivint Solar, which recently set up shop on Brigham Street. The company, which is the second largest installer of residential solar panels in the country, according to a press release, opened the Marlborough facility this spring.The company differs from some other solar retailers in that it does not sell the solar panels, it merely places them on homes and then sells the power to the homeowner at a reduced cost."We sell cheaper electricity to residential homeowners," said co-district manager Richard Howell.District Manager Derek Landino explained the process, saying that the company will ink a 20-year agreement with a homeowner and install the solar panels on the home. Each installation is tailored to the specific home, Howell said.There is no up-front cost or fee to have the panels installed, Landino said, although they remain the property of Vivint Solar, which will maintain them over time. Landino said that the power generated by the panels is sold to the homeowner and sent back into the grid.The electricity generated by the panels is currently sold to consumers at 10.5 cents per kilowatt, Landino said. Power purchased from traditional electric companies is currently in the range of 17.5 cents to 22 cents per kilowatt, he said. Vivint is limited to annual price increases of 2.5 percent, he said.Landino said that the panels are designed to provide 90 percent of the power to an individual home.At the end of the 20-year term of the agreement, a homeowner can terminate the agreement and the company will take the panels back, renew for another 20-year term, keep the same panels on a year-to-year basis, or buy the panels from the company, Landino said.The Marlborough location, one of three new locations in Massachusetts, features a training center where employees can practice mounting the panels on residential rooftops.The Marlborough location currently has about 30 sales employees, with another 25 working on the operations side. Operations Manager Richard Anderson said that the company is trying to expand the operations staff to about 50 by the end of the quarter and 60 to 70 by the end of the year. Job postings can be found at vivintsolar.com.Vigeant said he was happy to welcome the company to the city."Obviously, this is the way of the future. Electricity costs and energy costs are getting out of sight," he said. "Keep growing here."Kendall Hatch can be reached at 508-490-7453 or khatch@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @Kendall_HatchMW.